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Celduilon
About Celduilon is one of the oldest remaining cities of the last eladrin empire. It was built in the middle of the great winter forest of the Feywild, seeming to spring up from the ground just like the trees throughout the city. In fact, many tall, broad trees are larger than several of the city’s eladrin-built towers, giving the impression that the towers are merely natural growths within the forest. The city does not seem to have any walls, instead hundreds of streets flow outward from the city center, obviously allowing visitors to enter wherever is convenient upon arrival. The streets of the city loosely paved with extremely smooth white stone. They wind their way through the city in a rather haphazard fashion. The streets are filled with a silvery mist, which seems to come from warm springs in the city. The buildings in the city are not built into city blocks, but rather cluster together in groups of three to five towers, almost organic in its layout; the roads flow around them, and no dead-end streets seems to exist in the city. Every street connects with another, or another branch of itself. Deeper in the city, visitors find it filled with warm springs, channels and bridges, as well as beautiful frozen parks with ice sculptures towering above the eladrin that gather outside their homes to meet. Population Population: 30,000 The population of Celduilon is almost primarily Eladrin, though other races do find their way into the City of Silver from time to time. Government Defense Celduilon has no outer walls, and the buildings most distant from the Citadel of Winter are without protection against anything coming from the forest. The inhabitants of these buildings take their defense into their own hands, though, and outlying buildings are full of surprises to ward off invaders from the outside. In many cases, those that dwell on the outskirts of Celduilon keep a bow or a spear close to the door, and those that can afford it have magical wards placed on their homes. Buildings on the outskirts also have arrow slits carved out of the walls on the upper floors (at least, those sections of the building facing the edge of the city), allowing their owners to fire upon intruders from the relative safety of their homes. As one approaches the center of the city, the buildings have fewer defenses raised by their owners, and the city’s own defenses become more prominent. The Citadel of Winter’s two primary defense mechanisms come in the form of revelation spheres and teleportation wards. Revelation Spheres: Invented at the creation of the original fortress, revelation spheres are solid marble spheres roughly 8 feet in diameter set into the indentations in the ground. They are only present within the boundaries and walls of the Citadel of Winter. Each revelation sphere is covered in glowing runes that pulse with arcane energy; these runes cause the spheres to give off waves of magical energy that disrupt illusions, including invisibility. In the Feywild, invisible threats pose extreme danger, since they could otherwise walk into the Citadel of Winter and kill the guards and ruling council; given the number of creatures in the Feywild capable of turning invisible, it is no wonder the city’s founders ensured that revelation spheres were placed at intervals throughout the citadel, ensuring that their zones of influence overlapped to cover almost the entire Citadel of Winter. Teleportation Wards: Consisting of elaborate runes placed on enchanted stones set into the ground, teleportation give off waves of magical energy that disrupt teleportation. These wards prevent potential attackers from teleporting up, over or through the great walls surrounding the Citadel of Winter. Celduilon's Story Celduilon was founded nearly 2000 years ago and is one of the oldest cities of the last eladrin empire. It was founded after the Midnight Wars against the ancient fomorian king Moran, the Eye of Ruin. The terrible fomorian king that had led his armies to the surface of the Feywild where they built the fortress Mross-Kagg, meaning “Stones of Pain” in the fomorian tongue. The vile rule of Moran spread over the surrounding land, to a point where all the eladrin kingdoms had to unit in order to face this common threat. Thereby forming the basis of what would be the start of the new eladrin empire. After a bloody battle between the eladrin armies and the fomorians, the surface forces pushed their enemies back into the fortress of Mross- Kagg. With the help of the most powerful eladrin wizards of the time, the eladrin unleashed terrible magic that shattered the fortress and the surrounding landscape for miles around. Unwilling to trust that the destroyed fortress of Mross-Kagg would stay empty from other fomorians,dreaming about rebuilding its power, the soldiers founded a fortress nearby, to guarantee that the eladrin would be aware of any attempts to rebuild it. At first, the fortress stood vigilant, overlooking the blasted landscape of Mross-Kagg, with soldiers patrolling the surroundings to make sure no fomorians would retake it. Over time, the vigilance of the eladrin guards and patrols grew ever weaker, to a point when many generations later, people questions the true threat of the old abandoned fortress. Soldiers brought their families to live in the fortress with them, and children were born in Celduilon with no knowledge of the original purpose of the fortress. Within a few decades, the small fortress was bursting with families, and these families built homes for themselves outside the walls of the fortress. With no attacks on the fortress, and no attempts by the fomorians to retake the Mross-Kagg, the fortress became a village, then a town, and within a few more decades the sprawl had become a city. Years came and went, and the original generation of soldiers who founded the fortress moved on to the next life. As the centuries passed, the true purpose of the Citadel of Silver (as the original fortress came to be called) was forgotten by all but a handful of city leaders, who then passed the secret knowledge of the history of Mross-Kagg down to their successors. With no more threats from the fomorians (at least, no more than any other eladrin city), Celduilon flourished and prospered. Eventually, the influence of soldiers waned and scholars, artists, and artisans became the new lords of the city. As the silver towers of Celduilon grew ever taller, the militant history of the city faded into history. ARCHITECTURE No city better exemplifies eladrin architecture than Celduilon. Taking a look at the various buildings throughout the city, it becomes easy to feel like you are walking through a place built by beings with a different outlook on the world. Buildings in Celduilon expand vertically; there are no sprawling estates in the city, and when more space is needed the owner of a building adds on another floor. Most buildings in Celduilon are at least 30 feet tall, and almost all of them are circular towers with doors on the ground floor and stairs spiraling upward around the walls on the inside of the building. Eladrin buildings almost never have windows on the ground floor; it is too easy for an eladrin to teleport, and eladrin value their privacy. On the upper floors, well out of the range of a fey step, buildings have windows that are made of reflective glass, allowing those on the inside to see out but keeping those on the outside from seeing into the room. Wealthy eladrin pay to have disc-shaped platforms enchanted to hover near buildings they own, allowing an eladrin to fey step out of the upper floors of a building directly onto a platform and then descend to the ground by stairs without having to leave through their own front door. Eladrin keep their private chambers on the upper floors of their building, leaving a large, open common area on the ground floors. Eladrin homes do not have bedrooms, but instead have cozy, soundproof meditation chambers where the eladrin spend their resting time. Proper meditation is extremely valuable to the eladrin of Celduilon, and maintaining a small but plush meditation room is a matter of pride for most eladrin. Unfortunately, this means that inns in Celduilon often have no bedrooms; those few that do (designed to cater to outsiders) have bedrooms constructed with a uniquely eladrin viewpoint. Normally, these bedrooms are small rooms with one bed and little room for anything else. The common areas of eladrin homes are lined with bookshelves, since reading is highly valued in Celduilon society. Eladrin store their valuables in small, underground vaults, accessed by secret doors. These vaults exist to keep others from teleporting into the vault, and the vault floors are lined with thick metal and stone to prevent anything from breaking into the building from below. T HE CITADEL OF WINTER Where the original fortress of Celduilon once stood is now the towering Citadel of Winter. After the population of the fortress began to grow beyond its capacity, major sections of the original fortress were torn down, rebuilt, torn down again, and rebuilt to better accommodate the fledgling city’s expansion. At the point when Celduilon could no longer be referred to as a town, the leaders of the city organized a massive reconstruction effort for the original fortress. The entire original fortress was rebuilt around a single, looming tower that stands above all other buildings in Celduilon. This tower is the central structure of the Citadel of Winter, and it serves as the central building of government and defense in Celduilon. As the city expanded further it did so outside the high walls of the original fortress, in the end leading to that the City of Winter became the center point of the city, not the city per se. The Citadel’s design was influenced by human architecture, which at the time was deemed worthy of study due to the human propensity for defending their cities against invasion. However, the eladrin builders took inspiration from human designs and used their own techniques to produce a magnificent structure unrivaled in its beauty. Despite its artistic appearance, the Citadel of Winter is extremely functional as a defensible structure. High towering walls surround the main grounds of the Citadel (clearly a sign of human influence), and the tower is guarded at all times, inside and out. The Citadel of Winter not only serves as the first and only defense against the threat from Mross-Kagg, it also is the central meeting place for the city’s ruling council. Within the citadels are the offices and living quarters of the seven council members, and the Citadel also serves as a barracks and gathering place for the city guard. Moreover, the Citadel of Winter serves as a base of operations for the city’s secret police force, known as the Winter’s Watch. The interior of the Citadel is well appointed, and even the most utilitarian parts of the Citadel have some amount of decoration and beauty to them. The Citadel also has a number of meeting chambers, training areas, and even a banquet hall. The Citadel of Winter is the one building in the city that resembles the castles and keeps built by humans, though eladrin consider the Citadel far superior to any human creation. THE OLD BATTERY Just to the northwest of the Citadel of Winter is the section of Celduilon referred to as the Old Battery. The oldest part of Celduilon, the Old Battery is the first section of the city founded when the population of the original fortress outgrew itself. Named for a line of towers that once stood in its place, the Old Battery is as close as the city of Celduilon gets to a bad part of town. As the oldest section of the city besides the Citadel, many of the towers of the Old Battery are older than any living eladrin in the city. Though most are kept in fair repair, few of the inhabitants of the Old Battery are what one would consider “wealthy.” The Old Battery has a somewhat notorious reputation primarily due to the fact that many of its inhabitants are the families of exiles. Being exiled from Celduilon is a severe punishment not only for the offender but also for the offender’s family; having a family member exiled is like having a black mark placed on your family’s reputation. Most such families are forced to move to the Old Battery by societal pressure, and while some suffer the disgrace in silence just as many more bear a grudge either against their exiled family member or against those who decided to send the relative into exile. The Old Battery is full of history, but that history is overshadowed by its reputation. Although most inhabitants of Celduilon would hesitate to call this section of the city “dangerous,” many would agree that an unwise person enters the Old Battery alone. Criminals and outcasts flock to the Old Battery, and many would look to take advantage of unwary visitors. Inhabitants of the Old Battery are usually normal people just trying to get by, but there is no doubt that the section of Celduilon is a breeding ground for dissent and chaos.